Ups and downs of downtowns

Re-examining center-city living in the wake of terrorist attacks

CHICAGO (CBS.MW) -- From Society Hill in Philadelphia to West Loop Gate in Chicago and LoDo in Denver, people have been streaming into America's downtowns in the past 10 years to stake new claims on condominiums, townhouses and even single-family homes.

The return of residential living to downtowns across the country started with a trickle in the early 1990s but built to near flood proportions in places such as Chicago late in the decade as younger workers just out of college and empty nesters giving up the suburbs combined to drive demand.

But that fledgling movement, which was swimming against the tide of most development that continues to push far into the metropolitan hinterlands, could be threatened by the events of Sept. 11, developers and demographers say.

The vitality of cities is not in question, but their vulnerability was exposed.

"Do downtowns look like a target? Yes," said Eugenie Birch, a professor in the department of city and regional planning at the University of Pennsylvania. "But if people are reasonable ... they'll see all the elements are still in their places in downtowns to attract people.

"In the end, the movement will not stop. It may slow down, but it won't stop," she said.

Strengths and weaknesses

It's not just residents, though, who may shy away from central business districts. Retail and entertainment venues, which have become mainstays of the most vibrant urban cores, also could re-evaluate their location decisions.

"A challenge that has emerged since Sept. 11 is [to] sustain downtowns as retail and entertainment destinations," said Michael Beyard, a senior fellow at the Urban Land Institute. "I think any slowdown will be temporary, but the jury is still out. What you really see is just how fragile some of these areas can be."

Jaquelin Robertson, a partner in the New York architectural firm Cooper, Robertson & Partners, says cities need not suffer in the aftermath, however.

"Cities from the beginning of time were primarily about protection. They were where you went for safety," said Robertson, one of the project architects on Battery Park City, the mixed-use neighborhood constructed in the shadow of the World Trade Center where as many as 4,000 residents remain displaced.

"We've been blessed in the New World in that we have open cities that have been able to spread out," he said. "But the lesson that cities have to be about safety -- not crime, but safety -- is going to be relearned."

Yet for much of the 1990s it was excitement that drove people back to the city center.

Birch has been studying downtown migration patterns for the last several years. In her look at 45 cities, she found that more than three-quarters of cities added residents downtown since 1990. She toured 25 of the cities this summer and will report her findings in the January issue of the Journal of the American Planning Association.

"The success of the past 10 years had deep roots. It didn't just happen," Birch said. "In 70 percent of the cities, there is a business improvement district or some other agency working very hard to promote downtown housing."

Still, that growth has barely been enough to overcome decades of residential flight from downtown. When measured since 1970, nearly two-thirds of the downtowns studied showed no growth at all.

And she acknowledged that measuring downtowns is not an exact science. "The definition of a downtown is elusive, and the size varies depending on who you ask," Birch said.

"There are a lot of people leapfrogging back into downtowns in places like Chicago. But it is still a trickle and not a trend."
William Hudnut III,former mayor of Indianapolis

Who are the downtown dwellers? They are more highly educated, older and more diverse than the overall population in the metro areas they inhabit, Birch said. There are more nonfamily households, and most households have no or few children.

"There are a lot of people leapfrogging back into downtowns in places like Chicago. But it is still a trickle and not a trend," said William Hudnut III, former mayor of Indianapolis and a senior fellow in public policy at the Urban Land Institute.

Hudnut said the bulk of the people moving into downtowns fit into three groups: "Singles, mingles and jingles."

"The singles are the laptop crowd, the mingles have no school-age children, and the jingles are the empty nesters," he said. "Cities ... are going to have to design accordingly."

Against the grain

At the same time cities are recapturing population, more and more Americans are making the decision to move to smaller towns farther away from urban centers and even beyond the suburbs in many cases.

The events of Sept. 11 "will make that suburban/exurban move more prevalent," said William Frey, a demographer at the University of Michigan's Population Studies Center. "But even before that, many people's long-term decision on residence included the idea of living in a smaller environment, of moving farther out."

And yet those who champion cities say the terrorist attacks should be a rallying cry for our urban centers.

"It's no coincidence that what was attacked was a high urban concept," said Daniel Patrick Moynihan, the former senator from New York. "What we have to do now is concentrate and defend."

"Something happens with people when they're together that doesn't happen when they're dispersed," he said. "That's the lesson of humanity, right?"

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